"Pictures don’t lie," is the old line and it’s pretty accurate even in today’s world of AI manipulated images. But even before AI, pictures could mislead.
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of a picture that had an enormous impact on Canada’s political landscape. It was the 1974 election campaign, and the location was North Bay, Ontario. The Conservative campaign plane was on the tarmac and reporters and staff went out on the aircraft for some fresh air and exercise. Some started throwing a football around. Tory leader Robert Stanfield joined in the fun effortlessly catching and throwing the ball around. My old friend, a legend himself, CP photographer Doug Ball started snapping pictures with his Nikon camera and fired off a roll of 36 frames, dropped them in an express bag and sent them off to Toronto for distribution to CP customers including the Globe and Mail (no digital cameras then!).
Ball knew that the majority of pictures he took would show Stanfield had caught and thrown the ball well, but you wouldn’t know it with the next day’s Globe. The one shot they chose to splash across the front page was the picture that many would say cost Stanfield the election – fumbling the ball with a contorted face to add to the disastrous political moment. There were of course other reasons for the Conservative defeat, like wage and price controls, but this picture sure didn’t help.
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